Bobthebirder's Video Blog

West Knighton
Thursday November 1st 2012

Today I was out on a BTO bird survey counting winter thrushes.
This was the third one of the season and the first that managed to turn up anything more than a few blackbirds.
In fact I ended up with a total of 51 blackbirds, 24 song thrushes and 2 fieldfares.
And this hare...

The fields around West Knighton are the best places to see brown hares that I know.
The fields are small, there are lots of paths to explore and they're full of hares.
This one clearly isn't too keen on getting his paws wet, it had been an exceptionally wet day the day before.
Also notice how his ears are able to point in two different directions.

The same field also produced this distant view of a group of three roe deer (filmed at 60 frames per second to slow the speed down):

As this group of roe deer run away they make exaggerated leaps high into the air.
This 'pronking' is a ploy that most herd animals use to deter predators.
The idea is that only the weaker animals in the herd will be picked off.
So if you demonstrate how strong and fit you are you are less likely to be chased.
Obviously the deer don't know that the last wolves disappeared from England about a thousand years ago.
Just shows how slow evolution is.

A bit later on I found this youngster feeding quietly.

A little later it joined its mother and bounced off.
Watch out for the grey squirrel in the background...